


Fix the World

by Louffox



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T HEARD 126, Rome is the worst, end of season pain, everything is pain, might wright more, no beta we die like men, spoilers for episode 126
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-16 03:19:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18512836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Louffox/pseuds/Louffox
Summary: The side of good and evil is just a matter of where you're standing.





	Fix the World

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lot more planned for this and I might revisit it but I suddenly felt like... this was good. This was right. This was AWFUL.
> 
> I dunno man. I don't even know.

Two figures burst free of the smoke and headed for the Tower. The forces had been concentrated on the bridge and the spire, taking the bait, pulling further away from the Tower. A large force wouldn’t have been able to get through, but a lone pair could get away and go straight for the tower. They were a duo of extremes- a hulking orc woman, dark skin, dark armor, wielding two massive axes, and a tiny sorcerer, skin shimmering with a peculiar bronze hue, lightly armed but bearing two handfuls of magic fire.

 

The orc pummeled the gate with her axe, and the halfling flung acidic magics at it, and it broke. They charged forward, plunging into the tower.

 

Once, the sorcerer had been a halfling. His words had been the only weapons he’d needed, and he wore svelte clothes rather than maille and scales.

 

Once, the orc had been a paladin. Her armor had been a splendor of pink and shimmer, a beacon of hope and affection, healing and heroing far and wide.

 

Once, London had been a bustling city.

 

Once, people had been in control of their own will.

 

Once, the hunter in front of them and murderess behind them had been their friends.

 

\---

 

A city of grotesque opulence, all pale soft gluttony and greedy lust. Grizzop had spat a word earlier-

 

“What did you call them again? Esi- emi-...?”

 

“Epicureans,” he told her, all his teeth showing. She was glad he was here- he wasn't rubbish at sneaking, and always said what he wanted, he didn't play word and manipulation games, and his smile was full of daggers. And he hadn't scolded her when she'd sunk one, two daggers in the man who'd grabbed her earlier. That left an uneasy feeling in her belly, like the burn of whiskey in an empty stomach. Hot and worried. Hamid would've told her off. Azu would've healed him. Grizzop only fitted an arrow in his throat, keeping his shout down to a gurgle.

 

She turned her face back down over the city. Something about these hulking pale, soft, babbling people made them seem less than human, like she had turned over a rock to find the underside full of slow moving grubs. The understanding that these were the people who almost broke the world made it worse. 

 

The horizon occasionally flickered. The roars from earlier had stopped abruptly.

 

The fools ruled the city and dragonfire ringed it. It was all wrong.

 

“Romans. They killed the world. Or, well, nearly killed the world. I’ll fill them all with arrows,” Grizzop snarled, looking down.

 

“That’s- I mean, I’ve got no problem with that, sure, except maybe daggers in my case, but… we should probably be figuring out how to get back,” she said, a little perplexed that she was being the voice of reason.

 

“Right, yeah, but… if we cause a little suffering to these monsters along the way, all the better.”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, alright.” She leaned away from the edge of the rooftop and turned her back on the city. “So, like… how are we gonna do that?”

 

…

 

She pushed the air out, pushed her legs forward, pushed her arms pumping, pushed hard. Run. Faster. You have to run.

 

They had found the city was even worse, once they got to know it. If the maggot-like people had made Sasha's skin crawl initially, it was nothing to the horror she came to learn. The city was full of magic, and that magic was used to keep them rich and fat and happy, but also to keep the outside out. An orb- the Cortex, they had called it. It was mottled blue and full of twisted magics, a bit of corrupt astral elemental, memory spells, illusion spells, and god's breath. Somehow that made… the ring. The outer mile around the city was just a layer of mind control hell. Anyone trying to enter was mind-controlled and reduced to another hapless wanderer, attacking any others that came close.

 

Grizzop had helped recruit a few Artemis worshippers to help, and they'd eventually managed to establish contact with the meritocracy- the folks on the outside, dragons and others. They formed a plan. They stole the Cortex, saved Grizzop from his mind controlled state (thank goodness, she thought she had lost him for a few days, and like hell was she attempting to get back without him) and hunkered down to wait.

 

The dragons forced their way into the city a few days later, and she and the Artemis resistance learned of a plot at the last second. As they fought in the lower levels of the city, dodging magic blasts and tumbling around the magicians, glowing with power, feeling her daggers bite deep where it counted, twisting and flipping and running, a scout approached her.

 

They informed her that the head consul had barricaded themselves in the Capitol building, and were doing some kind of spell. Something with the planes. A distortion. A door. They were going to try and escape.

 

_ You and me both, pal, _ Sasha thought. She shouted for Grizzop, and they charged back through the city.

 

They found the magicians, and Grizzop was able to recognize a two-part spell: two rips through the planes. One somewhere safe. One somewhere burning.

 

Sasha grimly pulled out the Cortex and fed it her will.

 

**Stay here. Never leave. We're going home and you're going to hell** .

 

The air in the center of the ring of casters looked hot and oily and shimmered with a sickly, unnatural force.

 

They thought they could just control people, and own the world, and all the wealth and food and money, and now that they'd been caught holding the bag, they were just going to take off? No. No. Not a chance.

 

The power of the Cortex seized them, and for a moment, the light inside the rip in the center of the circle changed.

 

Her heart leapt. It was nothing but light, as if something shone in a window, but the quality of it was familiar as her daggers, her fingers, her teeth and tongue. It was drab gray and just looking at it, she could smell rain on stone and horses and felt cloth and dust.

 

Home.

 

**You all can stay here and never leave. Die standing here. Never escape this place. Close it behind us. Don't move. Let the dragonfire destroy yo. You deserve this.**

 

**I'm going home.**

 

They plunged through the gate.

 

\---

 

They were seized the moment they emerged in London. Sasha was a Rackett, and paladins were no longer welcome. The new gangs dragged them underground. They learned they had been gone four months, and nobody had come out of Rome.

 

There would be no gold rings.

 

Instead, collars were being arranged to be fitted that evening.

 

It was going to happen again. Sasha was going to be trapped and enslaved. Grizzop would be treated like the goblin they saw, an animal, to be leashed and used. Their party had probably died. Grizzop remembered the hand reaching for them, the pit beneath. It was a miracle the two of them had escaped it, and they hadn’t even had to face the cult of Hades waiting for them in the decimated Rome, as the others did. Hamid and Azu were probably dead, and Sasha and Grizzop were to be bound to the gangs.

 

They still had the Cortex.

 

They were not bound.

 

They stopped the riots.

 

They soothed the screaming, frothing, mobbing world.

 

They fixed it all.

 

\---

 

They would not be stopped. They had fixed the world, and two stupid misled adventurers wouldn't stop them. They were still a team, Sasha and Grizzop. She saw them coming, and he prepared his bow, and she prepared their daggers, and they were so sharp and precise and fast. None would stand before them. She got up behind, real close, daggers out, and he kept back, ranged and ready. Some mangy sorcerer and disgraced paladin wouldn't stand a chance. 

 

They had defeated Rome, after all.

 

They had something to fight, for, after all.

The memories of their fallen friends fueled their fury and chaos would never take another treasured life.

They would fight for them.

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe I'll write a bit more about what happened to Azu and Hamid, and what Grizzop and Sasha did to London and Europe, in more detail. Dunno. I'm broken by all this so *shrug*


End file.
